June Mathis
| June Mathis | |
|---|---|
June Mathis, c.1920
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| Born |
June Beulah Hughes January 30, 1887 Leadville, Colorado, U.S. |
| Died | July 26, 1927 (aged 40) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Resting place | Hollywood Forever Cemetery |
| Years active | 1916–1927 |
| Spouse(s) | Sylvano Balboni (m. 1924–27) |
June Mathis (January 30, 1887 – July 26, 1927) was an American screenwriter. Mathis was the first female executive for Metro/MGM and at only 35, she was the highest paid executive in Hollywood. In 1926 she was voted the third most influential woman in Hollywood, behind Mary Pickford and Norma Talmadge. Mathis is best remembered for discovering Rudolph Valentino and writing such films as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and Blood and Sand (1922).
Born June Beulah Hughes in Leadville, Colorado, the only child of Virginia Ruth and Dr. Philip Hughes. Her parents divorced when she was seven and her mother remarried, this time to William D. Mathis, a widower with three children whose name she would eventually adopt as a stage name. She had been a sickly child and believed she healed herself through her sheer force of will. She believed everything was mental and everyone had certain vibrations, stating, "If you are vibrating in the right place, you will inevitably come in contact with the others who can help you. It's like tuning in on your radio. If you get the right wave-length, you have your station."
Mathis was educated in Salt Lake City and San Francisco. It was while in San Francisco she gained her first stage experience, dancing and doing imitations in vaudeville. At the age of 12 she joined a traveling company and at 17 became an , performing with Ezra Kendall in The Vinegar Buyer. Later she appeared in several Broadway shows and toured for four seasons with the female impersonator Julian Eltinge in the widely popular show The Fascinating Widow. Supporting her now twice-widowed mother, she would continue to perform in theatre for the next 13 years.
Mathis was determined to become a screenwriter and, accompanied with her mother, she moved to New York City where she studied writing and went to the movies in the evenings. She entered a screenwriting competition; but despite not winning, her entry was so impressive it did bring job offers. Her first script, House of Tears, would be directed by Edwin Carewe in 1915 and led to a contract in 1918 with Metro studios, later to be merged into MGM. As one of the first screenwriters to include details such as stage directions and physical settings in her work, Mathis saw scenarios as a way to make movies into more of an art form. Much of the standard screenwriting styles can be attributed to her. Mathis later credited her success to a strong concentration on plot and theme: "No story that did not possess a theme has ever really lived.... Occasionally one may make money and perhaps be popular for a time. But in the end it dies."
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